Have We Met?
by WidowScorpion
Summary: They had. A Flac series.
1. Chapter 1

**_Not my usual style of writing, and I had bigger plans for this chapter, but I wanted to finish it before the creative juices ran out! Enjoy!_**

Mottled with viridescent vines, the orange hues of the library brickwork were fading against the infiltration of green. The place did not stand tall, nor was it imposing. The public centre was rather subtler in its majesty, with the patchy, unkept grass and creaking doors underselling the treasures hidden inside. Adrian Fletcher knew that appearances could be deceptive. By all counts, his military buzz-cut and black hoody combo screamed trouble-maker, not library-regular. His image was somewhat softened, however, by the woman currently yanking his arm in all the wrong directions, mumbling something about romance novels or the lark. Fletch didn't really care. His mother could do what she liked once they entered those rusting doors – he was heading straight towards the non-fiction section.

Perhaps this was one stereotype Fletch lived up to. He was more focused on messing around in class for his academic studies to be anything better than mediocre, but give the boy something broken and he could fix it, no matter how testing, or how taxing. It was something that made his chest puff in pride, and the thrill of a mechanical puzzle gave him more of a buzz than algebra or Spanish or Keats, or whatever the teachers babbled on about.

When he had almost bid a fine farewell to his arm muscles, the tension dissipated as his mother released him from her overzealous grip. He rubbed his wrist in mock accusation, looking up at her with the best exasperated look an eleven-year-old could manage. She just grinned at him, a grin that he mimicked almost immediately. It was a grin of mutual understanding.

"Meet you back here in fifteen minutes?" His mother asked, as she always did. It was a routine of theirs. They would select their respective books, migrate to the back of the library, read together, and scoff some chocolate whenever the thin-lipped librarian looked away. Fletch would wipe his sticky fingers on the browning pages of whatever book that had taken his interest, and would then, inevitably, be scolded for it.

His eyes lit up in anticipation. "You know it."

Before she could blink, Fletch had skidded over towards his favourite section. Car mechanics. He ran his thumb over the spines of a few volumes, scanning the titles for anything he hadn't already read, to no avail. Huffing, Fletcher, not one to give up easily, hopped in a new direction, over to a batch of books piled precariously on a debilitated table. It was when he could not find _one_ interesting blurb that his attention wavered. That was how he ended up making the make-shift book tower, humming rather loudly to himself as he did so.

"Do you mind? It sounds like you're trying to strangle a cat over there." And that was how his make-shift book tower clattered to the floor, smacked by his arm and thrown by the momentum of his turning around. He cringed at how _bloody loud_ it was, a flush staining his skin red. A red-headed girl, the owner of the voice, he supposed, glared at him disapprovingly, her arms crushing a paperback to her chest.

"Sorry. Sorry." He bent down in a flurry of uncoordinated limbs, scrambling to retrieve the novels, and his dignity. The mysterious girl remained still, watching with something between vexation and…no, just vexation. After what seemed like an age, he had gathered and replaced all the fallen books, straightening in triumph, flashing her a winning and embarrassed smile. The girl just stared at him with an eerily unreadable expression. He squinted at her, fishing for some sense of what she wanted.

She was his age, roughly, and her clothes had seen better days. The thin, dark yellow cardigan wrapped across her small frame was fraying at the sleeves, a few small holes dotted around the hem. Fletch reckoned her sneakers had once been white. Now they were dirtied, the worn material cracking at the heel. Aiming his gaze back upwards, he met her eyes with a stupid look on his face.

"Move."

"What?" He just stared at her dumbly.

"It's how you get from A to B."

"What?"

She rolled her eyes, shoving past him to the ruin of his physics-defying book building, and sifted through carefully. Hand stilling, she lifted a particular volume and examined it, before tucking once of his improvised bricks under her arm. Throwing him a disparaging glare, she sauntered off, and he gawked after her. Fletch jogged to catch up, his curiosity getting the better of him. He'd make the joke about dead cats if he had paid enough attention to his mother's warning idioms.

"Anatomy," he blurted, not able to stop himself. She stopped, tilting towards him, and he could almost feel the sigh ripple through her. Fletch pointed at the book she had chosen, looking rather like a toddler in his attempt to appear anything more than brain-dead. "Anatomy is pretty cool, but I'm more into mechanics meself."

"I don't care." That was blunt. He stuttered a little, at a loss. The girl arched an eyebrow. "Can I go sign these out now?"

Fletch recovered somewhat, managing coherency. "Feel free. Was never stopping ya." She eyed him with thinly veiled annoyance, his accent grating on her withering nerves. "I never seen you round here before, is all. And that's well weird because I know _everyone_ in these parts."

"You can't know _everyone_ ," she replied incredulously. At least she was engaging with him. It was a start.

"Swear on my life!" Fletch argued stubbornly, his voice rising an octave. Her lips twitched with touches of mirth. He smiled sheepishly, knowing full well he claimed the impossible. The pause allowed him a cheeky peak at the other book in her possession, determined to keep the conversation going.

"And baking," he exclaimed, craning to read the title half-obscured by her thumb. This mouth diarrhoea was becoming quite the habit. "Got something special coming up?"

Her expression darkened, and Fletch got the feeling he had stumbled on something off-limits. She seemed to retreat back into herself for a few awkward moments, before, to his surprise, she answered him. "I'm turning twelve next week," she confessed, something wistful in her tone. Fletch frowned, confused.

"Can't you just buy a cake? Would be a lot less effort."

She jutted her jaw. "No." And this time, there was a finality threaded into the timbre of her voice. He was struck by the need to fix whatever was bothering her. Fletch figured it would be a big job, repairing something that seemed so broken. He didn't doubt his abilities, however, being the engineering whizz he was.

"Adrian?" His mother stole his concentration for a moment too long, as he glanced over in the direction of the homing call. When he twisted back around, the mystery girl had vanished in a puff of smoke, the non-fiction with her. She hadn't even bothered with stamping them, and Fletch would have been lying if he wasn't a little impressed by her moxie. He supposed she would be back for more. No one could resist the books, or him, for long. Excited by the prospect of seeing her again, a grin crinkled his face. There was something about her. A bit rough around the edges, but with hidden depths. A lot like his library.

"Adrian?" This shook him from his reverie.

"Coming!" He yelled across the room, ignoring the glares he received in return.

He'd wait for her, he decided.

And that's what he did, every day, clutching a homemade and hand-drawn birthday card, until they knocked his library down.

Too broken, they said. Impossible to fix.


	2. Chapter 2

**Well, this is over a year late. Life, university, and a traumatic brain injury got in the way! This is also me trying to gradually ease myself back into writing. I don't really know if I knew where this chapter was going, but I kinda like the idea of this becoming it's own fic if there's interest for that. Anyways, enjoy! (Also I forgot how hard Jac is to write - like how?)**

* * *

 ** _Central London, December 1996._**

The wind whipped the cold, concrete London buildings with a vicious malice, and so they creaked under the winter gale. It was a frostbitten morning, with shrivels of sunlight waning under the undulations of a cloudy sky. There was an otherworldly quiet, like that before a storm, but what really was the sweet solace of silence before the working day truly began. On the corner of one ordinary, grey street, in the small alcove long forgotten by an office block, was a tiny, slanted shop, its roof hunched as if the broken back of an old man. A red-green sign above the doorway smiled happily down at the frosty street below, though the peeling maroon paint seemed to track down the wood like salty tears.

This sign read: **_Fletcher's Mechanics_** …

…and the eponymous man in question was buried underneath his latest patient, a grey and groaning Ford Fiesta, gangly legs sticking out between the front wheels. Adrian Fletcher was whistling his latest rendition of _I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles_ contently to himself as he worked, sliding back and forth on the creeper in keeping with the cadence of the melody. And it was when his rendering became particularly untuneful that he was rudely interrupted, yanked from beneath the car by a foot hooked around his ankle.

"Oi!" Fletch blinked as his eyes adjusted to the sudden intrusion of light, regathering his bearings. "You blinded me!"

When his vision returned, he stared up at the irritatingly blasé face of the perpetrator, framed against the pearl-white ceiling. The withering rays of sun gently warmed the golden hues in her hair, which fell at softer curls at her shoulders, and seemed to him the brightest entity in the room. Her high cheekbones were bleached with faint rose, a mark of the cold air creeping through the open garage door, but otherwise her features were a pale ivory and seemed to reflect the icy glare pouring from her eyes.

Adrian realised then that not only was he staring, bewilderedly and uselessly, at this woman, but that he was also, bewilderedly and uselessly, splayed on his back underneath her. Thus, he jumped to his feet.

"No. I didn't," she said matter-of-factly, watching him bounce upwards with an analytical gaze, reactively stepping back, twisting the helmet in her hands. Fletch frowned, confused. "Blind you," she clarified. "Because that would imply that your vision loss was neither temporary, nor partial. And, given that you just gave me a rather interminably depraved once-over, I don't think that implication is sound, do you?"

He needed a moment to absorb her reply, a flash of red colouring his face. "Okay, okay. Jus' an expression. Jeez. Don't need a lecture on the meanings of words."

"Semantics," she provided, inscrutable.

Frowning was becoming a peculiar habit of Fletch's. "What?"

"Are you always this articulate?" The shadow of mirth that crossed her eyes was soon consumed by impassivity.

Fletch hoisted an offended eyebrow. "Are you always this rude?"

"Yes," she replied candidly, with a small shrug of her shoulders. "It's my M.O." The woman paused, examining his expression for understanding. "That's _modus_ -"

"Yeah, I know what it stands for," Fletch muttered sourly. "Semantics."

She tilted her head, gaze wondering away from his. "Well, acronym- "

Fletch stuck out a hand, interrupting the impending lesson. "Adrian Fletcher," he introduced himself brightly. He then remembered the oil that blackened his palm, and so wiped a paw down his fraying apron before trying again. "What can I do you for?"

"Ah, so this dump belongs to you," she drawled slowly, eyes skulking over the mildew mottling the walls and the slate-grey dust under which she supposed there were shelves. She did not move to take his hand. "Figures." She switched her attention back to him, finding great pleasure in the indignation he was trying and failing to hide. "Now, I'll try to be as monosyllabic as possible, save the cogs whirring. Bike," she turned temporarily towards the street, indicating an old, vermillion motorcycle, "broke." The woman lifted the corners of her mouth into a patronising smile. "Go fix."

Fletch shot her his best attempt at a glare, pulling back his hand. "I'm not a bloody gondola, you know. You can't hire me out by the hour."

She just smirked in return. "Realistically, Mr Fletcher, judging by the sorry state of this place, I don't think you are in any position to refuse my business."

He glowered at her for a long, drawn-out instant, scrambling to find any sort of apt reason to decline the work. Eventually, though, he groaned in discernible defeat and ran a hand across the prickly shadow of a stubble on his chin.

"What's wrong with it?" He sighed, walking over to the slender, claret Harley Davidson. The woman followed, slinking into a space beside him.

"Blasted thing refuses to start." Fletch bent down, gaging the bike's observable condition. He looked up at her, brow furrowed.

"Hang on, if your bike is broke, how did you get it here?" The redhead raised her eyebrows in bemusement.

"We flew, hand in throttle, on a magic carpet," she quipped dryly, her voice awash with sarcasm.

Fletch pouted childishly and quickly resumed staring at the bike frame. "I'll throttle you in a minute," he muttered to himself, words muffled against the motorcycle's cold metal.

Only his retort was not quiet enough. "Your customer service skills leave a lot to be desired, Adrian." Fletch gulped and his eyes widened, cartoonish and comical and chicken. He straightened, dared to glance at her. "First, you insinuate that my weak, womanly arms are incapable of pushing my own motorbike, and now you are conspiring in my murder. Dear oh dear, I am beginning to understand why this shop is in ruins."

"That's not what I was-" Fletcher began, disgruntled, before he exhaled deeply, forcing back composure. "Look, any person would have trouble hauling this thing across town, even some big, bulky bloke." And then his eyes broadened again, only now in realisation. "That must mean you're local." He waggled a conceited finger at her, a shit-eating grin on his face.

She seemed unmoved. "Wow. Superb deduction, Watson. What do you want, a gold star?"

"Holmes," Fletch interjected, almost too eagerly.

The woman looked momentarily lost. "What?" Fletch revelled in the small ounce of confusion that coloured her features.

"Sherlock Holmes was the detective," he clarified smugly. "Watson was just his sidekick." Fletch smirked, a flurry of triumph pushing out his chest.

It was then that the corner of her ruby lips twitched, sketched small indentations into the skin by her mouth, and this set off the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Yes. I know." This woman had an uncanny ability to insult him. Fletch decided he liked that.

The two strangers allowed themselves a long moment to stare at one another, entranced, uncertain, reckless on the bitter winter night. Fletch endeavoured to _see_ her, wondered what lay under the icy façade. She surmised that she should have blinded him.

"I didn't catch your name, earlier." Fletch's words punctured their reverie.

"That would be because I didn't offer you one."

"Well, I need it, you know, for the books. To fix the bike," he babbled awkwardly, blindsided by the intensity of her gaze.

She elongated a hand, splayed out her soft, svelte fingers. They reminded him of the wispy branches of a willow tree. "Jac Naylor," she purred, confidence a sweet camouflage for uncertainty.

He grasped her hand in his and shook, enthusiastic. "Nice to meet ya, Jac Naylor."


End file.
